Costa: Football, fire and The Peacock Throne’

Thursday

Nov 29, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2007 at 6:41 AM

I was sitting at my “work station” a few days ago trying to write something funny. I was nodding off a bit because I had just spent the last few days ingesting enough tryptophan-laden turkey and sugar-loaded baked goods to anesthetize Robin Williams.

Peter Costa

I was sitting at my “work station” a few days ago trying to write something funny.

I was nodding off a bit because I had just spent the last few days ingesting enough tryptophan-laden turkey and sugar-loaded baked goods to anesthetize Robin Williams. The parking lot is virtually empty. The only action out there was the falling of a big, brown oak leaf. It hit the pavement and sailed across the lot in the wind like a dhow sailing up the Nile.

I suddenly remembered something funny that happened around this football time of year 40 years ago. Brown was playing Yale in Providence. I was sitting in the stands with my father-in-law who was a vocal Brown alum. Brown was making progress down the field but kept getting penalized. First it was for being offside. Then, it was for holding. Then again, it was for unnecessary roughness.

This went on for a while until Brown was within 10 yards of Yale’s goal line. The Brown team ran a play and the referee almost immediately blew his whistle. The crowd groaned. Just then, my father-in-law yelled out: “What is it this time? Threatening the goal line?” The Brown crowd erupted in convulsive laughter. Even the grumpy referee broke into a smile.

Also about 40 years ago, I was attending an evening lecture given by Richard Emerick, head of University of Maine’s Anthropology Department. Emerick was a very witty guy, whose sense of humor was legendary on the Orono campus. An older man in the audience had brought to the lecture what appeared to be hundreds of peanuts in a large paper bag. He would dig into the bag constantly and take out a few peanuts. The bag rustled incessantly.

After about 15 minutes of this distracting rustling, Emerick looked at the man and said:

“You know, with the right amplification, you could make that sound like the Great Chicago Fire.”

I laugh even now when I recall that line.

I can remember some very funny stories heard in the newsrooms in which I worked over the years, but only a few can be relayed in a family newspaper. One such story occurred in the late 1970s when the Shah of Iran was planning a celebration commemorating his years as head of “The Peacock Throne.” It was to be an unbelievably lavish affair with white horses, glittering carriages, processions, trumpets, royalty, jewels and fireworks. We wire service news guys were sitting around in a conference room in New York going over preparations on how we would cover the event for the hundreds of newspapers, radio and television stations who did not have the resources to send their own reporters and photographers to Tehran.

The incredible luxurious list of events planned for the Peacock Throne made traditional British coronations look doughty and unexciting. So, after about an hour of going over the assignments, a feature editor asked if the photo department were planning to shoot the event.

The photo chief, a big, growling man, said: “Why, no, were going to use file photos from the last coronation.”

There was dead silence and then insane laughter.

Those were some funny days.

Peter Costa is a senior editor with Community Newspaper Company. His book, “CostaLiving: Laughing through Life,” a collection of his humor columns, is available at amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble bookstores.